Personal trainer Cindi Stone, left, works out with Michelle Ryan, director of operations… more

DONNA ABBOTT VLAHOS | THE BUSINESS REVIEW

Community Care Physicians P.C. will open a fitness facility in Delmar this summer, one of several gyms it expects to build over the next few years.

Dr. Barbara Morris, chief medical officer for Latham-based Community Care, said the goal is to have a hotel-style fitness facility in every region in which the medical group has a significant primary care presence. The group—the area’s largest non-hospital practice, with 163 physicians in 12 locations—is out to distinguish itself from its competitors by creating a wellness division that includes adolescent and adult weight-loss programs and fitness classes.

Personal trainer Cindi Stone, left, works out with Michelle Ryan, director of operations… more

DONNA ABBOTT VLAHOS | THE BUSINESS REVIEW

Morris declined to say how much Community Care plans to invest in the gyms. It has the backing of Albany health insurer CDPHP, which provided $450,000 in grants payable over three years.

The Delmar location, in Community Care’s new health center at the corner of Delaware and Elsmere avenues, will actually be the group’s second gym. The first opened a few years ago, in its headquarters in the Capital Region Health Park in Latham, but was intended only for use by Community Care employees. About a year ago, it was made available to Community Care patients.

Now it, and every gym Community Care will open, will be open to the public.

“I think it’s a great idea, and I applaud Community Care for taking the lead here,” said Dr. Bruce Nash, chief medical officer of CDPHP. “Health care has traditionally been a disease-based model and they are trying to move to a wellness model.”

The gyms will create a new source of income for Community Care, although Morris said that is not the primary goal.

“We aren’t looking at them as a revenue stream as much as a way to distinguish ourselves in the area, as the place to get all of your health care,” she said. “We aren’t out to compete with Gold’s Gym.”

She said that once Community Care gauges the success of the Latham and Delmar gyms, “we will pick our next target.” Every new center like the one in Delmar will have a fitness facility, but in some cases, gyms may be added to existing Community Care locations.

There appears to be an ample market for these services. According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly a quarter of a million adults in this region are considered obese, and about 74,000 have been diagnosed with diabetes.

“As we as a society become less active and more obese, we are seeing an increase in chronic illness,” Nash said. “It is becoming a crisis. Traditional medicine deals with disease after the fact, but it is really about prevention. We need to move more and eat less, or eat more of the right things. That is more important than the latest technology to deal with heart disease.”

The gyms are only part of Community Care’s effort to address the issue. In early March, it opened a new medical practice dedicated to adult weight loss. WE CARE Weight & Exercise Management is led by Dr. Katherine Stam, a family physician certified in bariatric medicine, and includes two personal trainers. Patients must be referred by their primary care physicians and have body mass indexes above 30, or above 27 with other conditions such as diabetes.

WE CARE will be limited to Community Care patients at first, but the goal is to open it to others. Classes offered by the practice’s personal trainers, including zumba, yoga and Pilates, will be open to the public.

Community Care started its adolescent obesity program, NICE Weight Transitions, in February 2010, also with CDPHP’s support. Morris said the program, which enrolls teens in eight-week classes, is booked up with a waiting list. It is based in Latham, but recently expanded to Malta.